Philip und die anderen

In Philip and the Others, Cees Nooteboom tells the story of a young man who hitchhikes across Europe on the trail of a gorgeous Chinese girl, rushing from acquaintance to acquaintance and visiting his "school of life" in the youth hostels and on the streets. In seven chapters, the "fabulating magician" (FAZ) unfolds a melancholy fairy tale in which eroticism does not play a secondary role: Here we experience, according to the writer Hermann Lenz, "groping and marvelling at the attitude to life of the youth, who are heading towards an undefined goal and meet the world with tenderness. Philip and the Others, Nooteboom's first novel, written a good fifty years ago and passed down from generation to generation as a cult book, is a very special novel: "It is astonishing", wrote the critic Rolf Brockschmidt, "with what eloquence Noo.